Friday, November 7, 2008

Better Start Training

A couple of weeks ago I read an article (it might have been this one) about the Rapha Gentleman's Race and was trying to think of something similar we could do in Memphis. Of course the options are few due to our vertically challenged geography. But as I was having some beers and pizza at Memphis Pizza Cafe one afternoon I got an idea; and maybe you can guess where I'm going with this: "We can combine all of these things and have a great race!" So I started planning in my head the route to the 4 MPC's then Emily showed me the menu and there are actually 5 locations!

I went home and sat down with google maps and mapped out a general route that covers 57.7 miles and thought about some general rules:

- Race takes place on Labor Day or some holiday when everyone is closed and the weather is nice- Team race: all team members must cross finish at the same time (thought about making it a co-ed team race, but I don't know how many girls will be down for this)- Drink a beer at each location- Early registration is a must as teams will be chosen at random

You can see by the way the locations are staggered that it won't be a very difficult ride. This is also not a fixed specific ride, none of our alleycats are, but I know that a lot of people haven't done 60 miles on their fixed gear, much less a geared bike. I'm posting about this now because Josh Ryan mentioned doing a longer race today and I was all "I got that shit mapped already!" and secondly to get everyone's input. It's difficult to organize a race by yourself, as a few of us know, and the reason for this blog is to build our community. So let us know what you think.